The Desert Column

Desert Column is one of his earliest books, a diary of his experiences during World War One, as a trooper in the 5th Light Horse Regiment that served first in Gallipoli and then in the Gaza desert. When Lt General Harry Chauvel, the Australian commander of the Desert Mounted Corps, made his desperate decision to order an attack on the town of Beersheeba late in the afternoon of 31 October 1917, Trooper Idriess watched on as the Australians wrested victory from imminent catastrophe and seized the town...As Idriess watched on, his mates from the 4th Light Horse began their charge on the town near sunset. His account of the 4th Light Horse’s desperate final charge is breath-taking.

“Then someone shouted, pointing through the sunset … There, at the steady trot, was regiment after regiment, squadron after squadron coming, coming, coming! It was just half-light, they were distinct yet indistinct. The Turkish guns blazed at those hazy horsemen but they came steadily on.”

The Desert Column gives the reader a ringside seat to the realities of service as a mounted Anzac soldier, especially during the last great massed cavalry charge in recent modern history. It is irrepressibly laconic Australian in its prose and dry wit. What Ion Idriess made his career on was the notion that there were distinctively Australian stories that could replace the jingoistic and often nationalistically turgid myths of British Empire. As a writer, Idriess traced the origins of Australia’s sense of itself.

Ross Coulthart, from his introduction